Transition from pressurised envoronment to vaccum environment

Hi,
I wanted to know who has an idea about a mechanism to transit from pressurised environment to vaccum environemtn without losing air.I know airlock does this work but it has some air loss.does anybody have idea?
I thought about some kind of bulb to be produced at the transition place,is it possible?is there any kind of material to do this?

hi,
is there some kind of material that is not able to transit air molecules but is able to transit humans through it?something like soap bulb but stiffer that can recover itself if a perturbation occurs in it?

What you're proposing is impossible given current technology- you would need an air-tight seal around whatever passes through the "membrane" (an impossible feat with something like a space suit which is covered on the exterior with fabric) and it would also have to capable of maintaining a non-leaking vacuum seal (also no small task).

Staff: Mentor

Hi,
I wanted to know who has an idea about a mechanism to transit from pressurised environment to vaccum environemtn without losing air.I know airlock does this work but it has some air loss.does anybody have idea?
I thought about some kind of bulb to be produced at the transition place,is it possible?is there any kind of material to do this?

hi,
is there some kind of material that is not able to transit air molecules but is able to transit humans through it?something like soap bulb but stiffer that can recover itself if a perturbation occurs in it?

Two threads merged.

arimin11 -- in the future, do not multiple post your question across multiple PF forums.

Force fields are pure science fiction. The membrane idea is interesting but essentially it's just a fancy airlock, albiet one that uses endocytosis. How about rather than focussing on highly/overly speculative ideas (some of which have no basis in reality) you focus on the engineering problems of airlocks to make them more efficient?

You mean like recapturing some of the lost air?I've thought about it.My idea is that we transfer high voltage electricity to the air exiting airlock to make it ionized then with the help of a magnetic filed inside the airlock we can collect these air molecules that have gone out of airlock.But there are some flaws to this concept,like high voltage in a room full of oxygen is disaster or these ionized air molecules could harm astronaut's charged systems. Any idea to do this air recapturing ?

I like this questions. Innovative idea. However, passing through a substance might be possible. But not in a standard suit. As the astronaut is halfway through he will experience air pressure on one side and vacuum on the other. Given that his cross-section will be about 1m^2 that's 10 tonnes. It would put him under a bit of pressure. Suits are designed to take the pressure from the inside not the outside.

To prevent this problem he would have to have a special suit to go through or the substance would have to be very thick. Eitherway we are getting back to an airlock. If you really wanted to prevent air leakage it would be easier to design the airlock to collapse to prevent leakage. So the airlock is made of soft material that surrounds the astronaut when he enters and pushes all the air out. Then the air lock opens and no air is lost.